Digital Stats

I love the smell of data in the morning!
Interesting and surprising statistics about digital media and devices. Compiled & curated by Dan Calladine, Aegis Media - dan.calladine@aemedia.com -
All views expressed are my own. Please email me if you have any queries, amendments or suggestions. Follow me on twitter - I'm @dancall

Monday, 5 February 2018

"The UK’s ad market reached a new milestone during the third quarter of 2017 as almost one in four pounds spent on advertising went to mobile, which posted year-on-year growth of 30.7% to £1.3bn, according to Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report data published today.
Total ad market growth was recorded at 3.5% year-on-year, with £5.4bn spent during Q3 – the 17th consecutive quarter of market expansion.
The report found that total spend on mobile (including display, search, and other formats such as SMS/MMS) was higher than TV spend for the first time. Yet TV remains the leading display channel.
“The latest data indicate that total mobile ad investment during the quarter was higher than that for TV for the first time – though the two channels serve different roles for advertisers,” said WARC’s Data Editor, James McDonald.
“While TV remains the largest display medium by some distance, mobile investment is being driven by advertisers looking to reach consumers via search results and social feeds.”
New data show that the vast majority of mobile display spend is being directed towards advertising on social media, which rose 44.7% year-on-year. This, coupled with rising spend on paid search, is driving sector growth, as early estimates for the full-year 2017 put total mobile adspend above £5bn.
The latest verified data resulted in an upgrade to 2017 full-year estimates, with total ad market growth now believed to have been +3.4%, 0.3 percentage points higher than the last AA/WARC projections in October 2017. Advertising expenditure is expected to grow by a further 2.8% this year.
Though total TV saw a slight decline (-0.8%) year-on-year during the third quarter, within this, video on demand spend posted healthy growth of 13.3%. TV spend across traditional and digital formats is thought to have returned to growth in the final quarter of last year, culminating in a preliminary estimate of -2.0% for 2017 as a whole, the first annual dip since 2009. However, total TV spending is expected to turn positive this year (+1.5%).
Among the other media channels covered by the report, national newsbrands’ digital revenues rose strongly in Q3, up 21.5% year-on-year. While this was not enough to offset print losses during the quarter, the total market contraction of 5.1% was the best performance in three years, suggesting a slight easing of the intense business pressures newsbrands are facing.
Elsewhere, direct mail recorded its strongest quarter in six and a half years, as spend rose 5.9% to reverse a prolonged downturn. Radio (+5.1% year-on-year) also had a strong quarter, though annual dips were seen in out of home (-0.8%), cinema (-8.4%) and magazine (-11.9%) spend."
Source: Data from The Advertising Association and WARC, published 31st January 2018

"Other than its iPhones and computers, Apple sells a bunch of other products, like the AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Beats products, iPod Touch and, most recently, the HomePod. In Q1 2018, Apple saw $5.5 billion in revenue for these other products, an increase of 36 percent year over year.
That increase suggests Apple’s Watch Series 3, which it launched this past September, and its AirPods are selling well.
In Q4 2017, Apple sold just $3.2 billion worth of other products. To be clear, these revenues do not include pre-sales for the HomePod, which starts shipping February 9 for $349."

"The new study, conducted by McGill Urban Planning professor David Wachsmuth, offers some pretty striking data points. While its analyses were conducted independently, the study itself was commissioned by the Hotel Trades Council and the AFL-CIO, two entities with a vested interest in keeping hotel business booming, so bear that in mind.
For starters, the study estimates that Airbnb has driven up long-term rental prices by 1.4 percent, or $384 per year, for the median New York City renter. The research suggests that both restricted availability in the long-term rental market and increased financial incentives in the short-term rental market account for this increase.
To reach those conclusions, the study drew from a comparative model developed by UCLA to rule out confounding variables that, specific to New York, might be driving those increases."
Source: Techcrunch, 31st January 2018

"Advertising is still just a small piece of Amazon’s growing empire. But “small” is relative. In 2017, the company’s ad business generated $2.8 billion, making it bigger than the ad platforms managed by Twitter ($2 billion) and Snap ($800 million). Only three online ad platforms outrank Amazon’s: Google, Facebook, and Oath.
The bulk of Amazon’s ad revenue is generated by placements within Amazon.com. For example, sellers pay to appear in search results, or display custom banners above the results. Some, like toy company Melissa & Doug, shell out additional dollars for custom Amazon home pages. But the retail conglomerate has also started to explore ad placements across the wider web, as well as within Alexa and Prime Video. Marketers, drawn by Amazon’s wealth of shopper data, have been eager to experiment. Last spring, WPP acquired an Amazon-focused consultancy."

"Starbucks, the coffee chain with more than 28,000 locations worldwide, said its mobile order and pay service grew to 11% of transactions in U.S. company-operated stores in Q1 2018 from 10% in the prior quarter. The Starbucks Rewards loyalty program helped to drive mobile growth with an 11% membership gain to 14.2 million from the prior year. Member spending made up 37% of U.S. sales.
The company, which now has the ability to offer mobile order and pay to customers who don’t belong to its loyalty program, plans to ramp up the service to all customers in March, company president and CEO Kevin Johnson said in a conference call with investors. The growing popularity of mobile payment is leading the company to test cashless stores in the U.S."

"While the unbundling effort was a risky bet, it seems to have paid off for the company. Both apps have over 50 million monthly active users as of 2016, which has allowed Foursquare to put their foot on the gas with enterprise products.
For example, Pinpoint by Foursquare (an advertising product) now boasts more than half of the Ad Age 100 as advertisers. Attribution by Foursquare lets those brands measure how effective that advertising is. Attribution more than doubled revenue in 2017.
Developer tools are also an integral part of Foursquare’s business. The Pilgrim SDK and Places API “grew substantially,” according to a post by CEO Jeff Glueck, and now provides location tech to 125K+ developers.
Foursquare added 50+ new roles over 2017, including positions in engineering, sales, creative, business development, marketing, and ops. In 2018, the company is opening a new engineering office in Chicago, and plans to grow the team by 30 percent over the course of the year."

"Before the advent of dockless bike-sharing in Chinese cities cycling accounted for 5.5 percent of transport miles. It has now more than doubled to 11.6 percent. This is according to White Book of Shared Bike and City Development 2017, a Chinese-language report from the Beijing Tsinghua Tongheng Innovation Institute, an urban planning consultancy.
According to the Chinese State Information Center's Sharing Economy Research Center there are now 16 million dockless bicycles in the country, and each was used an average of three times a day.
The release-by-app GPS-trackable modem-equipped bikes are cheap and simple to use, attracting newbies to cycling. A report from Shenzhen's Transport Commission said that the city's 500,000 bike-share bikes had replaced nearly 10 percent of travel by private car, and 13 percent of petrol consumption."

"Why is Apple Watch sales momentum growing? My theory is that consumers are starting to see a place for Apple Watch in their lives. While Apple's revised Apple Watch marketing campaign around health and fitness has led to a clearer sales pitch, I think the health and fitness messaging ends up being Apple's way to get its wrist in the door. People aren't buying and using Apple Watch just for its health and fitness monitoring features. There is something more at play here.
Close to 20 million people bought an Apple Watch in 2017 because the device has become a bridge between the present and future. By including a screen, Apple Watch retains the familiarity found with smartphones, tablets, and laptops/desktops. At the same time, Apple Watch is giving wearers a glimpse of the future by introducing new ideas around how artificial intelligence, voice, digital assistants, and smart sensors can come together to produce a new kind of experience. "

Tuesday, 23 January 2018

"One in six Americans now own a smart speaker, according to new research out this week from NPR and Edison Research – a figure that’s up 128 percent from January, 2017. Amazon’s Echo speakers are still in the lead, the report says, as 11 percent now own an Amazon Alexa device compared with 4 percent who own a Google Home product.
Today, 16 percent of Americans own a smart speaker, or around 39 million people.
The holiday shopping season also seemed to have played a role in the increased adoption of smart devices in the U.S., with 7 percent of Americans reporting they acquired at least one smart speaker between Black Friday and the end of December, and 4 percent saying they acquired their first smart speaker during the holidays."